The Fifth Fleet had been active in the hidden waters for two days, and in the early morning of the 13th, Spruance suddenly gave an urgent order, and the fleet immediately left the hidden waters and sailed westward at a speed of 16 knots. Mitchell and Turner immediately sent a telegram asking why they were sailing westward, but Spruance did not explain his intentions to his two men, but only asked their two task forces to follow, and to prepare the carrier-based air force for battle.

The two-day wait gave Spruance more time to think about the next step in the operation, and finally Spruance was asked to revise the battle plan by a telegram from Pearl Harbor. This was a telegram from Nimitz, and the plane sent by Spruance to Kauai brought his request, Nimitz did not restrict Spruance's movements, and according to Spruance's request, the U.S. forces on Kauai temporarily stopped preparing for a counterattack and moved to a state of total defense. At the same time, Nimitz also put forward a new demand, if it is unable to defeat the main fleet of the Tang Imperial Navy, it should consider striking at the logistics support system of the Tang Imperial Navy, so that its front-line combat troops will not be able to obtain enough supplies and delay the offensive speed of the Tang Imperial Marine Corps. Obviously, Nimitz lowered the requirements for the Fifth Fleet, which also means that Nimitz also realized the difficulty of defeating the main fleet of the Tang Empire on the sea.

It was this telegram that made Spruance realize a problem that he had been ignoring before, and that was the logistics support system of the Tang Imperial Navy. The Tang Imperial Navy invested six main task forces in the Central Pacific, the theater fleet, and a huge support fleet attached to the Marine Corps. In addition, there are more than a dozen divisions of marines, huge shore-based aviation, front-line artillery, etc., all of which are counted, how much combat material is needed? And if the army loses the support of war materiel, it is impossible to win. Therefore, striking at the opponent's logistical support system should be one of the most effective ways to contain the Tang Empire's naval attack.

After receiving Nimitz's telegram on the morning of the 12th, Spruance also saw a glimmer of hope. At that time, Tan Renhao and Huang Xiaotian's fleets had not yet separated, and there was no more news from Kauai Island, Spruance judged that the two main fleets of the Tang Imperial Navy were still operating together, which made him give up the idea of sneaking up on the main fleet of the Tang Empire, and instead consider how to attack the logistics support system of the Tang Imperial Navy.

That afternoon, Spruance received another piece of information. This was provided by U.S. naval intelligence, and several submarines confirmed that the Tang Imperial Navy's convoy returned directly to Guam after reaching Midway, while several other convoys were transporting supplies to the front. Obviously, Midway was the center for the hoarding and turnover of front-line combat materials for the entire Tang Empire Navy, and all materials transported to the front line from the rear needed to be unloaded at Midway first, loaded onto ships again, and finally shipped out. This also fully coincided with the previous situation in which the main fleet of the Tang Imperial Navy was concentrated in the vicinity of Midway.

This piece of information gave Spruance an extremely bold idea, that is, to attack Midway Island and blow up the supplies that the Tang Empire Navy had hoarded on Midway. Such. The Tang Empire's Marines' attack on Kauai would be completely dismantled, at least to delay the Tang Empire's Marines' offensive.

Comparatively, the sneak attack landed the landing fleet assembled near Kauai. As well as the risks to and from the transport fleet between Kauai and Midway are considerable. The landing fleet was heavily protected, and the support fleet that supported the landing operation never left, and the fighters on dozens of escort aircraft carriers were not to be underestimated. And the round-trip transport convoys have been operating under the cover of shore-based fighters, not to mention letting the fleet sneak attack, even submarines are difficult to sneak up on these transport fleets. What's more, Spruance could not grasp the movement of these transport fleets in time, so he could not seize the opportunity of a sneak attack.

The surprise attack on Midway was not easy, and the Tang Imperial Navy spent more than a year on Midway to strengthen the island's defenses. Even without accurate information, Spruance could have imagined that the island was almost a fortified fortress. In addition to the dense anti-aircraft artillery groups on the ground, there must also be a large number of battle book planes deployed on the island, and if the sneak attack is unsuccessful, or if it is discovered by the enemy's reconnaissance planes first, the Fifth Fleet will be wiped out. But after careful consideration, Spruance decided that a sneak attack on Midway was not an impossible task.

At that time, the naval aviation of the Tang Empire had already begun to deploy combat aircraft to the front line, and undertook part of the airlift, as well as the task of replenishing the front-line combat aircraft. The planes were all brought in from the rear. Even if the new combat planes of the Tang Imperial Navy could be transferred from Wake Island or South Bird Island to Midway, because of the limited area of Midway Island and the limited capacity of the airport, more space had to be freed up, so that too many combat aircraft and long-range reconnaissance planes could not be deployed on the airport. Then, Midway's defense capability will be much lower, and if the timing is right, the sneak attack operation will easily succeed.

After spending hours, thinking back and forth, and solving a few key problems, Spruance made an extremely bold decision: a sneak attack on Midway! After making this decision, Spruance immediately ordered the fleet to turn around and kill Midway, taking advantage of the opportunity that the main fleet of the Tang Imperial Navy was still looking for his plan on the sea, and by surprise to the waters near Midway, giving the enemy a fatal blow by surprise.

The most important thing about the sneak attack on Midway is the choice of timing. Since the outbreak of the war, the fleet's sneak attack tactics on the island bases have not actually changed substantially, and the core of the war is that carrier-based aviation units enter first, blow up the airfields on the islands, seize air supremacy, and then bomb them in an all-out way, and even arrange for artillery formations to go to the shelling. The key to this tactic is to allow the fleet to secretly approach the islands without being detected by the enemy, enter the strike radius of carrier-based bombers, and quickly dispatch bombers to complete the most important first round of bombing operations. Under normal circumstances, in order to ensure the safety of the fleet itself and avoid a fierce counterattack by the enemy's shore-based tactical aviation deployed on the islands, the fleet will choose to enter the operational sea area at night and launch the first round of surprise attacks at dawn, without giving the enemy any chance to counterattack. It can be said that during the Great War, almost all sneak attacks on island bases were carried out in this mode. Spruance is also aware of the risks that come with this fixed tactic. The Navy of the Don Empire made several sneak attacks on Japan, the island bases of the United States, and almost all of them were successful. In addition, the island bases of the Tang Imperial Navy were also attacked by the enemy several times. Especially not long ago, Nihua Island and Wake Island were attacked by the US military, and the Tang Imperial Navy would not be unaware of the importance of Midway, let alone neglect to take precautions. According to the simplest line of thinking, the Tang Imperial Navy will focus on intensifying the search and reconnaissance of the waters around the islands at night, especially in the two hours before dawn, especially in the most dangerous directions that are vulnerable to attack. Make sure that the enemy fleet cannot stealthily approach the islands. Around dawn, fighter jets on the island's airfields will take off one after another to carry out air defense patrol missions. And for the first round of sneak attacks to succeed, the key is to drop bombs before enemy fighters take to the air.

After much thought, Spruance found two key points, one is the direction of entry, and the other is the time of the bombing. The Fifth Fleet's entry into the battlefield could not be kept secret, and the shore-based air forces on Midway would be even more cautious, perhaps their air defense fighters would be in the air an hour before dawn. In addition, long-range night reconnaissance aircraft on the island. Maritime patrol aircraft will be used in a centralized manner. Therefore. It is necessary to choose a suitable direction of entry and the right time for bombing.

It was impossible to enter directly from the east, and this was undoubtedly a direct upward collision towards the most heavily guarded place of the Tang Empire's shore-based aviation. It is also impossible to enter from the south. This will expose the fleet to shore-based reconnaissance aircraft on Gardner and Lysan Islands. Relatively speaking, the best direction of entry is the west, but the west has always been the main sea area where US submarines are active, and the Tang Imperial Navy has quite a few anti-submarine patrol ships operating here, and if these fleets encounter the Fifth Fleet, the Fifth Fleet's whereabouts will also be exposed. The only possibility is to enter from the north side of Midway.

Spruance had no choice in terms of the timing of the bombing, and he had to organize a night bombing. According to the general situation, the take-off of air defense fighters half an hour before dawn is already considered relatively early. Considering that the Tang Imperial Navy would strengthen the defense of Midway, then it should be unlikely that the Tang Empire's shore-based fighters would take off before five o'clock. Even if they take off at five o'clock, the fighters will only have an hour and a half to patrol after dawn, and then they will have to return to the airfield to refuel, and the pilots will need to rest. The hour and a half after dawn is the most dangerous, so it makes sense to set the bombing time to five o'clock in the morning, which requires the bombers to enter at night and drop bombs at night!

The biggest problem is still the quality of carrier-based aviation. Night bombardment was nothing to the carrier-based aviation of the Tang Imperial Navy, since the Second Task Force had carried out large-scale night bombing before the Australian landing campaign. The ability to bomb at night became an important criterion for pilots in the Imperial Navy, and even fighter pilots began to master the ability to accurately drop bombs at night. However, for the pilots of the U.S. Navy, night bombing is definitely a difficult ability requirement. In particular, for the carrier-based aviation of the Fifth Fleet at that time, it was almost a gamble of luck to let the bombers accurately destroy important targets on the ground at night, given that some pilots had not even fully mastered the skills of daytime bombing.

In the case where the quality of the pilots does not meet the requirements, Spruance has only one way, and that is to compensate for quality with quantity. The Fifth Fleet has three task forces, nine fleet carriers, and more than 1,000 combat aircraft. The "Essex" class aircraft carrier can fly up to half of its carrier-based aircraft at a time, that is to say, Spruance can organize half of its fighters to participate in bombing operations at a time, and more than 500 fighters will depart at the same time, while there are only two airfields on Midway, one large and one small, and it should not be very difficult to concentrate two groups of 500 bombers each to destroy these two airfields.

It was not until the afternoon of 13 July that the staff officers of the 51st Task Force drew up a detailed bombing plan, and the bombers of the three task forces set off in two groups, the first batch of bombers to reach Midway Island before 5 o'clock, and the second group of bombers to arrive over Midway Island at least 45 minutes late and after dawn at the latest. This also allowed the two groups of bombers to stagger their take-off and landing, and the first batch of bombers returned to the fleet after the second group took off.

It was only at this time that Spruance told Turner and Mitchell his true intentions, and made it clear that it was Admiral Nimitz's orders. Turner and Mitchell did not directly oppose it, to put it bluntly, they also knew that after Spruance made his decision, no matter how much others objected, Spruance would not easily change his decision.

In order to avoid the reconnaissance planes of the Tang Empire and the submarines of the Tang Empire traveling between the front line and the rear, the Fifth Fleet made several turns and changed its course several times between the 13th and the 15th. In order to get the fleet around the north side of Midway and save as much fuel as possible, it was necessary to carefully design the course and speed. If the Fifth Fleet sailed in a straight line toward Midway, it would have been able to dispatch bombers to bomb Midway on the 14th, but it was precisely because of the need to control the speed and make a detour that it was not until the evening of the 15th that the Fifth Fleet reached the waters northeast of Midway, and turned again and headed for Midway.

A few hours before that, Tan Renhao had just realized that Midway might be bombed, and had sent a telegram. The commander who remained at Midway had already begun to organize the defense after receiving the telegram and had sent all the reconnaissance planes out. The war materiel that had been concentrated on the island also began to be evacuated and transferred, and a convoy of transport ships that arrived at Midway Island that morning left the anchorage in the afternoon and temporarily "took refuge" on Lysan Island. The problem is that there are millions of tons of war materiel hoarded on Midway, and most of them are stacked in the open air, making it almost impossible to move them quickly.

In the early morning of 16 July, just as Tan Renhao was considering how to deal with the new threat of the US Fifth Fleet, and the supplies on Midway Island had not yet had time to be completely transferred, US bombers left the aircraft carrier one after another and flew to Midway Island......